Over the hills and far away
by irnan
Summary: Collection of Deancentric drabbley oneshots
1. 10 things Dean hates about Sam

_On__c__e more with feeling. I am NOT making money out of this! __Go away and pester someone else._

_AN: Well, I was reading happycabbage75's hilarious story "Wrecked Angles" and it made me wonder… Sam's always __so critical of Dean__. Isn't there anything Dean hates about Sam?_

_Oh, and I see no problem in loving both Oasis and Led Zeppelin – but I suspect Dean would have a thing or two to say about it._

_This one's for my sister. _

**10 Things Dean hates about Sam**

1. His music. Where did he get his hands on all that Britpop Oasis crap?

2. His scruples. Day jobs? Seriously. When did the kid pick up all these pesky morals? Has he really forgotten that they can't afford such delicate sensibilities in this job?

3. His selfishness. There's more to this life than your fights with Dad, Sammy. It's more complicated than the good ol' if-Dad-thinks-its-a-good-idea-I-won't-do-it attitude.

4. That disapproving look he gets when Dean's working his magic on some lovely young lady. Fun is not illegal – yet – and Dean's determined to have it. Especially when the girl in question has a smile like _that!_

5. Those latte-cappuccino things he drinks. That's not coffee, it's a lifestyle. How in the hell can anybody drink a lifestyle?

6. His inability to accept Dean's sacrifice for what it is: a gift.

7. The brooding. Never a good thing. If you can't change something – get over it and carry on. Don't dwell on it till your brain melts.

8. His seldom mentioned but fervent faith. It's as much use as a chocolate fireguard. Dean found that out the hard way. So did Mom.

9. His single-mindedness. Want, take, have. No distractions allowed. Even when they take the form of Dean himself.

10. The way he can read Dean like an open book. During those four years Sam was gone, Dean never let anyone in. It was easier, safer, that way (well, there was Cassie but let's not go there eh?). Now the kid's back and he can read Dean's mind. After all that time with no one, it's unsettling.


	2. Senses

**Taste**

There's no telling what Sam would say if he knew this, after all it is kinda – well, _girly_ – but the taste of Belgium Chocolate Haagen-Dazs ice cream is the closest thing to Heaven Dean thinks he'll ever experience. Rich and dark and smooth, there's nothing better.

**

* * *

Touch**

The memory of her touch seems branded on your skin, your jaw burning where Mom laid her hand against it in that gentle, loving caress. You've missed her desperately over the last twenty-three years, in every way possible, but it all comes together in that one gesture.

And you've just thrown it away –

Sam sits down on the bed beside you, his shoulder leaning against yours, and warmth spreads through you at the simple touch.

**

* * *

Sight**

It took years before you had enough self-control to salt-and-burn a body without turning away from the flames wanting to scream for Mommy.

**

* * *

Hearing**

_"__Many times I've loved_

_Many times been bitten_

_Many times I've gazed_

_Along the open road__…"_

"Dean – you do know all music did not stop with John Bonham's death, right?"

"Sure, Sam. Metallica's _Black Album_ was released in the nineties, remember?"

Sammy just groans, and mutters something you don't quite catch about MP3 players. Whatever those are.

**

* * *

Smell**

If asked to describe what the Impala smells like, Dean's not sure he could. There's no one single scent, but many, too many to list, and sometimes he's afraid half of them are only imagined.

Leather. Oil. Gun metal. Coffee. Sam's computer. The soap you wash your clothes with. Chocolate. Burgers. Old, musty books. Sweat. Sun-warmed denim. On rare occasions, always at Sam's insistence, shoe polish.

The clean smell of Sammy's new teddy (named Lancelot, because you had King Arthur) on the way home from the hospital. Dad's aftershave. Mom's perfume.

All in all? Home.


	3. along the open road

**Along the open road**

Dean hadn't really been expecting his sixteenth birthday to be anything special, but when his Dad called at half-eight in the evening and asked him and Sam to meet him at Ed's garage over the other side of town, he was a little annoyed. It was January, and freezing cold out, and Sam had promised to make dinner for a change seeing as, ya know, birthday? – but Dad was Dad, and what he said was law, so the boys wrapped up and headed out.

When they arrived at the garage, Dad was leaning against the side of a huge and rather scary-looking black truck. Ed was admiring the Impala. Politely put. Privately, Dean thought "drooling over" was a more accurate description.

"Bout time," Dad said, nodding at the boys. "Like her?" He jerked his thumb back over his shoulder at the truck.

"Scary," Dean said. "Why?"

He didn't see Sam's delighted grin.

John Winchester smiled slowly. "Just bought her," he replied.

Dean could feel the blood draining out of his face. "But-" he turned to look at the Impala, Mom's Impala, feeling physically sick at the thought of anyone else driving her.

Then Dad tossed something at him; only Dean's quick reflexes allowed him to catch the keys to the Impala, as he sure as hell wasn't paying attention.

"What?"

"She's yours," Dad told him. "Sam and I spent all week cleanin' her out for you."

Dean rounded on his little brother; Sam shoved his hands in his pockets and smirked at him.

"I wanna ride shotgun from now on," he said.

Dean's smile lit up the whole car park.


	4. april fools

**April fools**

"... so in comes the principal, just as Jake and I are tryin' to put everything _back_, and of course he doesn't believe us, cause, you know, the guy just hates me, and then he started yelling for an unprecedented _half an hour_, and now _this."_

And Dean gestured at the letter lying on the table between himself and John, who was looking rather harassed.

"He didn't believe you cause your rap sheet is already longer than the Impala," Sam told his older brother with barely-concealed amusement.

"Silence in the cheap seats," John ordered. "All right. What exactly am I supposed to do about it?"

"Move," Dean said promptly.

John glared at him. "Sounds like runnin' away to me," he said.

"No sir, it's a perfectly sound strategic withdrawal," his son replied, poker-faced.

John shook his head. "No way. There's four weeks of term left, you can sit it out."

"But he's got us scrubbing walls, and toilets, and the mess hall-"

"Since when do high schools have mess halls?"

"Well, they call it a cafeteria, but that's kinda misleading."

John groaned. "All right. I've heard enough. If you can't prove it was the Jenkins kid, there's nothing I can do about it, Dean. And Sammy's right. You're not exactly known as a model student."

"What happened to 'innocent until proven guilty'?"

"You're the exception that proves the rule," Sam said, and dodged out of the kitchen when his older brother made to grab him.

The next morning, upon arriving at the high school, the students of Clearwater found their way blocked by yellow crime scene tape that was stretched on pegs around the entire building, and ohmygod up _there_, hanging by the neck out of the third storey window – was that a body?

It took the Sheriff's Department three hours to announce categorically that they hadn't put up the tape, calm everyone down, remove the reporters from the scene and finally go into the school and retrieve what turned out to be a shop-window mannequin dressed in jeans and a t-shirt.

"Where the hell did you find that dummy?" John demanded when Dean got home.

"I didn't get it!" Dean exclaimed indignantly.

"Well, it's true," he said to Sam that night in the privacy of their shared room. "Jake grabbed it outta his Mom's store before he met up with me."

Sam grinned. "Not that it wasn't hilarious or anything, cause it was, really, especially when Mrs. White had hysterics, and the principal was pacing around composing his speech for the press conference – but did you have to leave the window open all night?"

"How else was I supposed to get back inside without Dad noticing?" Dean wanted to know.


	5. auguries of innocence

**Auguries of Innocence**

_Seeing a world in a grain of sand is easy_, you think. All you have to do is look, and let yourself relax, let your walls down, and there it is, all of it, a whole life laid out in front of you that you never lived but always wanted to. No matter what you told Sammy in Oklahoma.

He's sitting beside you, silent and still, all words spent. You never really needed them anyway, the two of you. Especially not now.

The windscreen of the Impala is warm against your bare back and your legs feel loose and heavy, sprawled over the hood as they are. The sunlight pounds down on you, your jeans getting ever hotter against your skin, your eyes shut behind your sunglasses against the glare. You can almost feel the sunburn growing, starting at your shoulders and wandering down your arms, your chest to the waistband of your jeans. Even your bare feet. Oddly, it's a good feeling.

But then again, today, every feeling is a good feeling.

After all, it's the first day of the rest of your life.

_It's a bonding,_ Sam's words run through your mind again. _Of… well, your soul. To mine. It voids the_ _contract, see? __The demon__ can't take yours without mine. Which would__ be r__eneging on her side of the deal, you know? She __agreed __to bring me back, not take me to hell for eternity._

_So… __that means_

_You're stuck with me. We can't be separated for long. Neither of us can be killed while the other one is still alive.__ Oh, yeah, and we get… telepathy of sorts. Just between each other. _

_Can't be killed… we're immortal?_

_No. We just can't die an unnatural death. Could be useful in our line of work, I thought._

_And telepathy… y__ou're __tellin__' me y__ou can poke around in my head any time you want?_

_I'm sure we can learn to control it, Dean._

_You're doin__'__ it right now!_

_Oh, shut up. I didn't say it would be easy._A flood of exasperation comes with the thought, almost drowning out the sheer joy Sam's been radiating ever since that demonic skank let you go.

Anyway, you don't mind, not really. Not anymore. You just lie there, on the hood of a car parked at the edge of the Grand Canyon, and hold infinity in the palm of your hand.


	6. choose the path where no one goes

_AN: Dean's side of "The only thing necessary"... title from Led Zeppelin's "No Quarter"._

**Choose the path where no one goes**

It comes to you in a graveyard, of all places. A graveyard in Iowa. Dad's scraping the dirt off the coffin lid, and you're hauling yourself out of the grave, the toes of your boots scrabbling for purchase against the treacherous dirt. The grass is wet, soaking your filthy jeans as you get a knee up over the edge of the grave.

"Dean, the salt," Dad says impatiently from behind you.

"Yessir," you mutter, biting your tongue on an acerbic remark about the facility of climbing out of a six-foot-deep hole when you're sixteen years old and only just five-ten.

Sammy's asleep. How does he do that? Just curl up on your jacket and doze off, no matter where he is, as long as it's warm enough. You pull out salt and lighter fluid as quietly as possible, but the shattering crash as Dad wrecks the coffin lid wakes him anyway.

"Yay," he says, yawning. "Bonfire!"

"Next time, we'll bring marshmallows," you promise.

"No you won't," Dad says firmly, shaking the salt over the corpse. "For one thing, there's no guarantee that you won't be attacked. For another, what if someone comes by?"

Sammy shifts uncomfortably, although you're not sure if it's the sight of the burning corpse or the thought of someone finding you that makes him do so. Probably the second one. Lately he's been much more… conscious of what you do, how it looks to other people. Why that is, or how it started, you're not sure, but you hate it, the way he seems almost embarrassed about it.

The way he seems almost to hate it, sometimes.

"Dad," he says slowly, and you think, _uh-oh_. "Dad… what if someone did come by?"

"Dean and I would get arrested, and you'd spend the night with social services," Dad answers dryly.

"Why?" Sammy wants to know. "I mean, I know _why_, but… why don't people understand?"

Dad looks down at him with an odd expression on his face. Is that… regret?

"Hard to say, Sammy. People have always been afraid of the dark, and the things that live in it. I think that… the more powerful we become, the more things we _can _control, the less we want to know about the things we _can't_."

"But if they did," Sam says, still slow and thoughtful, "if they did… they wouldn't need us, right? To do this, I mean. They could deal with it themselves, right?"

You snort disgustedly. "Somehow I doubt it. Can you really see people like Principal Thornton doing this?" And you wave a hand at the merrily burning fire for emphasis.

Sam shrugs silently.

"What's really bothering you?" Dad asks with a bite of impatience in his voice. He never has time for beating about the bush.

Then the words come out in a rush.

"Why us? And don't say about Mom. I don't mean about Mom. I mean… everything else."

The flood of emotions that cross Dad's face is too much to read all at once. Regret once more, understanding, surprise, grief, and even helplessness, because how is he supposed to answer that?

Then it comes to you.

"Someone has to. Someone has to face up to this," you answer, gesturing at the flames again.

_Other people could do that_ Sam wants to say, you can tell, he's got that sulky look again, but he doesn't say a word. Your glare shuts him up. Why can't he see?

Dad smiles at you over his head, proud and grateful.

You shove your hands into the pockets of your worn-out jeans and think of Mom as you stare into the fire.


	7. here is the deepest secret nobody knows

**Here is the deepest secret nobody knows**

Somewhere in between _that night_ and Dad's disappearance, you shut down. Not to the point of depression or anything so ridiculous, because, come on, if there's one thing Dean Winchester is _not_ it's a wimp who spends his days angsting about how no one loves him. No, you just… locked it all away, the emotions, the pain and fear that went with them, and got on with life, because that's what you do. You can't hang around feeling sorry for yourself forever. You have to deal. The world will go on no matter what.

But when you did you somehow also managed to lose the ability to actually talk to your family.

You hadn't really expected that, how difficult it would be to open up, to let them in – to let anyone in. No wonder it didn't work out with Cassie.

When Dad disappears, you can't even say _please_ when you leave him messages.

Then Sam comes back, and he can read you like an open book, like not one of the walls you spent so long constructing even exist, and slowly, very slowly, you're beginning to understand, beginning to see, what it feels like to let people see you.


	8. talking bout the break of dawn

_AN: Title from James Taylor's "Highway Song". Imagine-your-own-hunt._

**

* * *

Talking 'bout the break of dawn**

Sam lasts an impressive ten minutes before he breaks. Dean's sitting at the rickety motel room table, hands clasped around a warm mug of coffee, staring off into the distance.

"What was it like?" Sam asks softly.

When Dean looks up at him, his eyes are full of wonder. For a moment he seems to be struggling for words. Then they just spill out of him in a flood of pure awe.

"You know… you know that feeling when we've finished a job, and we're drivin' outta the town onto the interstate, it's, I don't know, one in the morning or something, summertime. And the windows are down, and the wind's in your hair, and the whole world is just laid out in front of you, stretching away into infinity?"

Sam smiles slowly. "Yeah. I know."

Dean smiles back. "That's what flying is like. Only a hundred times better."


	9. wunderkind

_AN: Blame this one on C.S. Lewis, and Neil Gaiman's short story "The Problem of Susan"._

* * *

**Wunderkind**

Dean was starting to think this one was a bust. People picking up and leaving their brand-new mansion in a hurry just weeks after they'd moved in didn't have to mean a haunting. The previous owners had been a professor at Harvard and his British wife; neither of them had even died in the house, and Sam had said the history of the place was clean.

They'd picked up some EMF-readings, but now, after searching the place for nearly an hour, they'd found a whole lot of nothing. There didn't even seem to be any creepy creaking floorboards, let alone a ghost.

Damn sensationalist gossip columnists. Seemed they'd wasted two whole days on a job that didn't exist.

Dean was on the first floor, shotgun in hand, glaring round at the utterly empty, completely silent corridor. Sam was downstairs; if Dean listened hard enough, he could hear his brother's quick soft footsteps.

The house was _that_ quiet.

Just as Dean was about to call down the stairs to Sam, he caught sight of a door standing ajar a few yards away. A long, thin strip of moonlight fell through the gap and cut across the floor and opposite wall.

Dean didn't remember that door being open on his way up.

But once inside the room, he it was empty apart from a large wardrobe sitting against the back wall, next to a window. There was nothing else in the room at all except a dead bluebottle on the window-sill.

Dean walked quickly across the room to the wardrobe. It was very old, made of heavy wood that looked like oak but wasn't. The doors swung silently on their hinges when Dean pulled them open.

Nothing but a few moth-eaten fur coats.

He was about to turn away when a noise caught his attention, a faint, far-off sound like a roar, mingled with distant, dangerous music, and with it came the sharp, tangy smell of pine trees and snow, and a sudden urge to step forwards overtook him, to walk away and leave everything behind, to lose himself -

- the promise of adventure and glory and sights few other men had ever seen, a battle at the ford of a great river, a voyage into the dawn on a green ship with purple sails. Beautiful caves that stretched into eternity, a ruined castle in an apple orchard, a golden-haired queen holding a hunting-horn and –

"Dean?"

He came back to himself with a jerk of surprise; Sam was standing behind him.

"Everything OK?"

"Yeah. Yeah, Sammy, everything's fine."

"Sure? You don't wanna salt-n-burn the nasty wardrobe?" Sam offered. Dean hit him upside the head.

"Place isn't haunted. They were just… the wrong kind of people."

Sam frowned at that, but turned to leave just the same. Dean pushed the wardrobe door shut with a soft _snick_, fingers brushing longingly across the smooth warm wood.


	10. exit light

**Exit light**

You're terrified. You're terrified, and it makes you feel guilty, makes you furious at yourself. You did this for Sam, so he could live, be happy again, even, and it's selfish and whiny and wrong to be afraid for yourself when this is about him.

You would never take it back.

It's just…

You were terrified. Left alone with your grief and your guilt and the evidence of your failure stretched out on a dirty bed before you, Sam's dead body a testament to your own inadequacy. You felt hollow inside, empty, the only thing giving you meaning gone, the last piece of your shattered family lost.

You no longer know how to be anything other than _Sam__my__'s big brother_. Any other parts of you, the other people you could have been, died with Mommy.

Sam called you selfish, lost as he was in his own grief, his own guilt, the only thing he could see was _Dean's going to Hell because of me_, but it's not in you anymore to ask for yourself. To exist for yourself. Everything you are is made up of other people. Sam, Dad, the strangers you help.

That being so, how could you have done anything other than what you did?

Still, you're terrified. You've never believed you would ever go to Heaven. That's not for people like you, thieves and conmen and killers. That's for people like Sam, good people, who believe in things like innocence and light and that you can defeat the things out there in the dark. People like Mom.

You've never believed you would ever go to Heaven.

But you've never been sure you were going to Hell.


	11. but your dreams may not

**But your dreams may not**

If you thought you were angry at Dad right _after_ he died, well. Let's just say the Dean Winchester of eighteen months ago has nothing on the Dean Winchester of _now_ when it comes to issues with his deceased father.

A small rational part of you knows perfectly well that much of what you yelled at your mirror image during that freaky-ass dream was not only not fair, because not even Sam at his worst ever threw Mom's death in Dad's face the way you did, but also simply not true. The man sold his soul to save you, how could you ever believe he didn't care about whether or not you lived or died?

But at the moment, all you want is your selfish obsessed bastard of a father _here_, now, in front of you, arrogant and unshakeable as ever, so you can rant and rail, shake your fingers in his face and scream yourself hoarse yelling accusations at him the way Sam always used to and you never could.

At the moment, all you want is for Dad to be here, now, in front of you, to catch your shoulders and give you a quick angry shake and tell you in that deep gravely voice to _snap out of it, Dean. That's __**not **__**true**__, not a __**single**__ god-dammed __**word**__ of it, and you know it, son._


	12. quite as high as it used to

_AN: Written for the spnflashfic challenge: Something new..._

* * *

**Quite as high as it used to**

"The way I see it, you owe me a favour," Sam says calmly, refusing to budge. Dean looks furious. "Favours are one thing, Sam. You're asking me to… to…"

"Put a CD player in the Impala," Sam repeats his request. "I saved your immortal soul, after all. It's the least you can do."

But Dean's face twists like the very words hurt his ears. "Never!" he declares.

Two weeks later, Sam wakes up at three a.m. to find the motel room otherwise empty. Dean, it transpires, is sitting in the Impala, glaring ferociously at the brand-new CD player. When Sam slips in beside him, he waves a disgusted hand at it.

"This is _good_," he says in the tones of an architect who's just discovered he's wasted two years of his life renovating a historical building the city council now wants pulled down.

For a moment, Sam doesn't understand what he's talking about. Then it dawns on him; drifting out of the speakers is the quick heavy beat of _Matchbox 20_.

It's not until Dean adds, "You're still replacing all my _Zeppelin_ tapes, though," that Sam starts to laugh.


	13. take my love, take my land

**Take my love, take my land**

"I _like_ you," River informed him as he sat down next to her. Her legs were dangling off the edge of the balconey, arms crossed on the bottom rung of the railing, boots kicking against each other with a dull _th-thud _every other second.

"Thanks, Angel," Dean said, amused. "I like you too."

"You like all girls," she said, a little disdainful, a little teasing. "Like Jayne does, only nicer."

"It's kinda hard to not be nicer than Jayne," Dean said dryly. "Trigger-happy sociopath."

"People say that about you, too."

"People say all sorts of things about me, Angel."

She sat up straight then, pulled her legs up and underneath her so she was facing him cross-legged, skirt riding up her thighs. Dean tilted his head at her, curious. "What?"

River reached out and cupped his face in her hands. "You're like me. You're Sammy's Simon on the outside, but in the inside, you're his River. You're broken, too. All in little pieces. And so very far from home."

Dean froze up briefly, staring at her. Nothing but sorrow and understanding in those huge bright eyes.

"Aren't we all, Angel," he said quietly. "Aren't we all."

"Pieces can be fun, too," she told him then, perfectly serious. "Can be all over. Simon and Sammy are always one place at a time, can't be anyplace else. Don't know how. Dean and River are always everywhere."

Dean raised his coffee-cup to her in a toast. "To pieces!"

She clacked hers against it, giggling. "To pieces!"


	14. playing a lone hand

_**AN: **For the flashfic prompt "resurrect a character", my second entry. headesk_

**Playing a lone hand**

"I'm impressed, kid," Dean says hoarsely. "Really impressed. I'm tempted to offer you a job, but your sister would kill me."

Ben laughs, delighted and embarrassed. "Thanks. I uh – it was – I was –"

"Terrified," Dean says. "Yeah, me too. But you did good; you saved your family. You saved me. If you hadn't noticed that trail…"

"If you weren't of the belief that M&Ms make up their own food group," Hailey says, joining them. "Ben, they're about to take Tommy to the hospital. You'd better get in the ambulance."

Ben nods, flashes one of those awkward grins at Dean and limps off to climb into the ambulance and sit next to Tommy.

Dean smiles at Hailey, a little wry, a little regretful. "They're good kids."

"Yeah."

"Don't loose 'em. That kinda love and loyalty doesn't show up often, even in families."

She looks at him sharply, and he winces inwardly, all too aware of the bitterness he hadn't meant to let show, the anger, the hurt.

"Tell me?" she asks.

Dean shakes his head, wordless. Once he starts, he'll never stop. The _panic_ on Sam's face when Jess invited him to stay a while longer cut deeper than any knife. Any Wendigo's claws.

Perhaps Hailey senses that; perhaps there's a sort of older-sibling-bond there between them. At any rate, she digs through the pockets of her shorts and pulls out a key ring, holds it out to him.

"You remember where we live, right? Stay as long as you like," she says. "I know they said you don't need a hospital, but you're still pretty beat up."

Dean pauses for a moment, swallows hard. How fucked-up is it that he practically had to beg his little brother to come and help him look for Dad, and that Sam dropped him again like a hot potato after barely three days; but this girl he doesn't know is trusting him with her entire life?

"Why?"

Hailey presses a hand against his cheek. "You saved us. I know Ben found us, but he would have been killed too if you hadn't been there to take charge, to get us out of the mines. And, you know. Two days ago we were in the same boat. You helped me out of it; the least I can do is make it easier for you to follow."

"Ooooh," Dean says. "That was _deep_."

She smacks him on the shoulder lightly, laughing. He reaches out and takes the keys, smiling at her.


	15. Résistance

_**AN:** Um, stuff? Also, DEAN HAS A CRUSH ON LENA HEADEY._

**Résistance**

Navigating Illinois sidewalks in a minor-to-middling snowstorm is difficult enough without being stopped by a chick in a bright red duffel coat waving a pile of soggy leaflets, Dean thinks.

"Are you a Christian, sir?" she demands accusingly. Her tone of voice makes it clear she'll think you a dirty sinner condemned to purgatory no matter what you say in answer. Dean kinda wants to give her a few pointers on sales technique.

"Well, my brother goes to church," Dean says, talking mostly over his shoulder as he sidesteps her and carries on walking. "I just talk to angels."

Round the next corner, the Salvation Army are playing obscenely cheerful songs under the protection of the root over the entrance to the bus station. Dean glares at them. A funeral march would be more appropriate for his current mood, although he's not sure why, beyond being a burden to his ungrateful ass of a baby brother and a complete failure at life in general.

It's not as if the witness he spoke to could even give him any useful intel about the case. You'd think if you were a sixty year old woman with a penchant for gossip who lived next door to the victim of a gruesome murder you would have seen _something_, right?

Apparently not.

When Dean gets back to the motel the first thing he does is check his baby. She looks cold and lonely out here on her own in the snow, but he'd rather she didn't get stuck in a snowdrift out there, thanks very much. He stamps the snow off his boots on the way up to their first-floor room, earning a disapproving look from the older couple coming towards him.

"Some poor maid will have a lot to clear up tonight," the woman says pointedly to her husband.

Dean sticks his tongue out at her. He can't help it. It's been a crappy, useless, cold, wet, irritating day.

The door to the room sticks, of course. Damn thing. Dean jiggles the handle and puts all his weight on the door and it comes unstuck with a spectacular whoosh. He nearly falls flat on his face, numb fingers and legs aching.

Sam doesn't even look up. He's reading Dean's copy of American Gods.

"Hey man. You find anything? And how come Gaiman never mentions the Christian God in here?"

Dean is starting to detect a theme to this day.

Hopefully that means Cas will stop sulking about that whole thing with Anna and drop by again. Dean is determined to get him a) laid, b) drunk and c) into a lot of trouble with Him Upstairs, just for kicks and not necessarily in that order. Cas needs a little perspective on this angel stuff; and also, if Dean butters him up, he might be able to keep Uriel off of Sam's back for a bit longer.

Not that Dean ought to be worrying about the lying little brat.

"I don't know, man," Dean said. "Maybe 'cause he's boring?"

Sam sniffs. "Your prejudices are showing again," he says.

Dean straightens up and crosses his arms over his chest, prepared to say something so scathing it withers Sam completely.

Nothing comes to mind.

In the end, he drops his boots in the bath and his gloves and jeans in the kitchen sink. Pulls a dry pair on and grabs the laptop, taking it over to the bed and wrapping the sheets round himself. His hands are still tingly.

"Research?" Sam asks.

Dean pauses for a minute. He'd meant to, yes, but suddenly...

"_Sarah Connor Chronicles_," he says.

Sam snorts. "Educational. Useful. Knowledge of the Terminator franchise will probably save our lives one day."

Dean glares at him. "You never know," he says, totally irrational.

Sam twists to look at him. "What would we do if the world did end like that, you know, tomorrow?" he asks sseriously.

Dean stares at him. "Go to L.A. and join John Connor," he says. "What did you think we were gonna do? Sit around in some rusted-out bunker and wait to be tracked down and stuck in a disposal camp?"

"Well, there is Bobby's place," Sam says.

Dean snorts. "Come with me if you wanna live," he says. It's not really an answer, but it is, and Sam gets it. Puts the book down and sighs.

"Yeah, whatever. So is this the one where Sarah sees -"

"NO SPOILERS!" Dean yells at a volume that could crack a window-pane if they weren't made of plastic. Sam just snickers.


End file.
